Rowan McCandless

Beyond Boundaries (2023) is the culmination of the inaugural Dave Williamson National Short Story Competition. In 2022, The Manitoba Writers' Guild (MWG) discussed the need to update and upsize our seasonal short story contests to capture the attention of more Manitoba writers. We wanted to create a competition with broader appeal not only across the province but also across the country. Seeking to preserve and honour the history of the Guild, we chose distinguished local author Dave Williamson as our Honorary Patron. Not only was he a founding member of the Guild, but he also founded and developed the nationally acknowledged Creative Communications program at Red River College and served as Chair of the Writers' Union of Canada 1992-93.

Finalist for 2022 Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction • Co-Winner of 2022 Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First BookAfter years of secrecy and silence, Rowan McCandless leaves an abusive relationship and rediscovers her voice and identity through writing.She was never to lie to him. She was never to leave him; and she was never supposed to tell.Persephone’s Children chronicles Rowan McCandless’s odyssey as a Black, biracial woman escaping the stranglehold of a long-term abusive relationship. Through a series of thematically linked and structurally inventive essays, McCandless explores the fraught and fragmented relationship between memory and trauma. Multiple mythologies emerge to bind legacy and loss, motherhood and daughterhood, racism and intergenerational trauma, mental illness and resiliency.It is only in the aftermath that she can begin to see the patterns in her history, hear the echoes of oppression passed down from unknown, unnamed ancestors, and discover her worth and right to exist in the world.A RARE MACHINES BOOK